We wanted Owen to get stuck in the Bing
The clock on the car read two fifty-seven, and the fog painted the ground in two feet of white. Christopher'd had about three club sodas, but Paulie had had about five neat scotches after dinner, and he was pretty happy.
Which meant that he wouldn't shut the fuck up.
"So I'm looking at the ugly fuck, and he's still standing there!" Paulie waved a hand. "Feech puts three slugs right in his chest, and another one in the brainpan, and the dumb fuck still stands there, like he's not sure he should go down!"
It didn't escape Christopher's notice that every time he heard the story of how Paulie and Feech La Manna iced Bully "Hanky" Loprezzo, the number of slugs in his chest grew, as did the length of time the hulking mass fucking stood there before falling backwards into his swimming pool. Next, Paulie would be telling him about how they had to fish him out of the water and Feech wouldn't go in because--
"--he'd just seen fucking Thunderball, with the sharks in the swimming pool." Paulie leaned back in the seat and stabbed the dashboard for emphasis, and Christopher wondered if the airbag would deploy. He used to yell at Aide for putting her bare feet up there sometimes, but she usually made up for it by giving him a handjob, so he gave her a pass. Chris looked at the person in the passenger seat--the thought of Paulie giving anyone a handjob was enough to drive him towards a bottle again.
"So the fucker weighs about three hundred pounds, and I'm dragging him through the water, and Feech is watching for the walls of the pool to open, you know, for the fucking sharks."
"I don't think that was real, man," Christopher said. "I mean, don't sharks live in salt water?" He unwrapped another stick of gum and shoved it in his mouth. "Pools have chlorine. Chemicals and shit. That's poisonous to animals."
Paulie shrugged. "I don't fucking know. It's sanitary. If it was poisonous, we wouldn't be swimming around in it, right?"
Chris stared out the windshield. "You got a point." He checked the clock again. Three oh five. Madonn'. He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. "Lemme ask you something. What do you think happens when you put a salt-water fish in a fresh water place? Does it kill them instantly? Or do they just get sick?"
Paulie slapped an unopened pack of cigarettes on the flat of his palm. "Do I look like fucking Jacques Costeau?" He ripped the cellophane from the pack and tucked it into the jiffy box. "It don't matter, because there aren't any fucking sharks that can live in a swimming pool, anyways, and even if there were, they wouldn't be in Hanky's pool, the cheap fuck."
Chris had to admit he had him there.
Paulie lit his cigarette and rolled down his window a bit, and the two of them stared ahead at the fog rolling in off Newark Bay, possibly some red flickering lights from ships or buoys out in the water. "Five minutes late," he muttered, and Paulie glanced at his watch.
"Nah, your clock is fast. See this?" He held up his wrist. "Atomic clock. You're fast by eight minutes." Instantly, headlights curved around a corner down the dock and headed towards them. Even from this far away Chris could hear the thrum of a V-8. "See? Right on time, the smelly little fucks." Paulie yanked the handle of the car door and pushed it open. "Gotta give them that."
Chris flicked his cigarette out the window before opening his own door. The car (a sixty-nine Mustang Mach One, they did love the classic cars) came to a halt and idled thirty feet away before someone got out of the passenger's side and walked towards them.
"Gentlemen," Thaddeus Roald said, spreading his arms in an innocent gesture. "Long time no see." He held out the pastry box in his right hand. "For you and the big man. Sfogliatelle from home."
Paulie took the box and lifted the lid to show him the money then looked up at Chris. "I love them Limey pastries." Then back to Roald. "A whole boatload of those scooter things are coming in next week. Vespa. Italian. Been setting them aside for you on account of the whole tiny car thing you got going on over there."
Roald tapped his cheek and rubbed his chin, thinking. "I can unload those. What kind of taste are we looking at?"
Chris lit another cigarette and Roald glared. The whole fucking crew hated smoking, but Chris didn't give a fuck. "Forty five."
"That's high," Roald sighed. "I have to find a processor. And then we have to slide them under Torch-"
Paulie snapped the lid shut on the pastry box. "Ey. What you have to do ain't none of our concern."
Roald shoved his hands into his suit trouser pockets, a mean feat for hands so big. Chris wondered if the suit was tailored special. These guys were always wearing it. Made him wonder if they did their dirty work in a three piece. "Forty."
The engine purred in the silence and Chris blinked at the headlights. He could see into the driver's seat where Roald's driver waited, hands on the wheel. Well, one hand. Suddenly Chris's piece felt too far away, too hard to draw from the back. He wondered what it would be like to throw down with one of them, and then he thought about fucking one of them, a girl, and what that would be like.
Now was not the time to be thinking about cooze.
Paulie brought his hand down in a demonstrative gesture. "Done. Thursday night, our man will be down there, so no permanent damage, eh?"
Roald walked backwards and folded his hands in front of him, like some kung-fu fucking master or something. "Gentlemen, as always, a pleasure."
They watched the Mustang screech backwards, and even though the windows were up, Chris could hear the music coming from it: Journey. What was with the Journey lately? Everywhere he went he kept coming across Journey. Maybe it was a sign. He'd ask Aide later. Maybe she'd have something to say about that.
The car was gone, taking their associate and 'Separate Ways' with them, and Paulie turned back to their car. "I gotta be up early tomorrow," Paulie said. "I gotta see a doctor about my thing."
Chris palmed his keys. He didn't want to talk about Paulie's intestines any more than they had at dinner. The man had no shame. What was the word for people like that? Hyper-adirondacks, or something, like that fucker who shut himself in his sterile apartment and wore ziplock bags on his feet. And then he made like some toy plane and tried to force people to fly in it. Or something.
"I gotta pick Aide up at the club," he groaned. "That fucking Audi is a German piece of shit."
Paulie chuckled as he opened the door, but he didn't say anything.
"What the fuck with this shit, anyway?" Chris asked. "They can't come down to the club and do this?"
"Oh!" Paulie interjected. "You want that oobatz coming around?"
He had a point. Chris shrugged and started the engine, backing them up and flipping through the stations with one hand. He settled on something with Tony Bennett and took them around the cargo crates with one hand on the steering wheel. "It's kind of funny, though, isn't it?"
"What?"
Chris flashed him a look. "That they don't do any loan sharking."
Paulie rolled his eyes and tossed the box on the floor of the backseat, then buried it under an old newspaper. He shook his head. "Fucking blowfish."
***
"I don't get why we don't tell them to take a hike," Chris mumbled into the felt of the pool table at the Bing. "Fucking fish give me the creeps."
"Donnie Rocco," Silvio said from his desk without looking up from his crossword.
Chris stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. If he was going to have to be around all this fucking booze, he was just going to have to chain smoke. "Who the fuck is that?"
Patsy knocked the eight ball in and swore. "Donnie Rocco over there in Cape May, right?" He shook his head. "Used to deal with those guys before they switched ports into Newark." He peeled a few twenties off his pocket wad and slapped them on the side of the table. "This fucking table is tilted."
"Hey, Georgie fixed it last week," Chris answered, pocketing the money. Patsy was a whiny cheap bastard sometimes.
Speaking of. Georgie knocked on the door and carried in the box from Italianissimo. "Three eggplant and one peppers and eggs." He tossed the box on Tony's desk and glanced around. "Where's the big guy?"
"In the can. You used to know Donnie Rocco, right, George?" Patsy pulled a sandwich from the box and yanked a chair to the card table. "Peppers and eggs? Madonn', indigestion."
Georgie put his hands on his hips and ignored when Chris reached around him for a sandwich. "I knew him, yeah. Well, before, you know."
Silvio tossed his paper in the trash. "We're talking about his little…" He shrugged. "Altercation with our aquatic friends."
It must have taken a few seconds for Georgie to catch up because he stilled, head tilted like an inquisitive dog. "Yeah, they're fucked up."
Silvio buffed his nails with some sort of pad. "What'd he do to them? Something about tunafish."
Georgie backed up a step, though whether it was voluntary or whether he just lost his balance was hard to tell. He couldn't have that many brain cells, and most of them were devoted to trying to remember something.
"Oh, I remember. Gee Gee had them on the payroll from his old man's days, right? So, they been paying every month, some huge nut." Georgie paused. "I don't know where they get it, but no one asks, and they just wanted some info on arrivals and shit, like once a month Donnie hands them a score, they jack it and send it over to England."
"Wales," Silvio corrected.
Georgie frowned. "I don't know what kind of fish they are. Aren't whales mammals?"
Silvio blinked. "Wales. Wales, the place you fucking stunad."
Georgie ignored him. Sound idea. "So one time Donnie's making the collection for Gee Gee, and he makes this crack like, 'Hey, I had sushi last night and I think I ate your mom there.'" He paused and they all had a good chuckle. Chris sat on the edge of the pool table and wondered for a second if that wasn't why it was tilted, all their fat asses sitting on it.
"Fucking fish pulls out a gun and cuts Donnie's head clean off, like some sort of laser or something." Georgie threw up his hands. "His head's rolling across the floor and those fuckers just walk out, came over here." He shrugged at Chris. "Lasers. They're from outer space and shit."
Patsy gestured with his sandwich. "And that, is why you don't fuck with the Blowfish."
The music from the floor below got louder as Georgie left, taking an eggplant with him, and dulled again as the door shut. Silvio leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke rings in the air. "Fucking outer space wiseguys," he muttered.
"You know, though," Chris said, stubbing out his cigarette. "They do breathe oxygen, so maybe they are mammals."
"They can breathe helium and talk like a fucking clown circus for all I care," Tony said, coming out of the bathroom and settling down at his desk. "As long as they keep kicking up, we leave the fish alone." He opened the wrapping to the last sandwich. "Peppers and eggs? Where's all the fucking eggplant?"
Chris wondered if anyone had ever made a Luca Brasi joke to the Blowfish. Probably not.
***
Jack Harkness pulled back the hammer to his Webley. It wasn't necessary, but it usually did a good job of scaring the shit out of people, like the one it was pointed at-Gerald Roald, sometime thug and receiver of stolen goods, illegal shipments, smuggler and in general Han Solo wanna-be.
And, you know, blowfish.
"I don't know where they come from," Gerald whimpered, and the machine in Tosh's hand beeped.
"He's telling the truth," Tosh said, her eyes not looking up from the scanner. "Or possibly lying. It's hard to tell."
Jack pressed the barrel to the Blowfish's forehead so hard that the sight dented his forehead. "I'm telling the truth! They come from the States! We have people there!"
"People."
"For years! They run their own thing! I haven't seen them in years! Decades!" Gerald waved his hands ineffectually. Maybe he was panicked. Jack didn't blame him. He had a gun pressed to his head. "They send note, we pick it up! That's all!"
"Oh I love storytime!" Jack had to admit their interference had not exactly been smooth, but he had avoided the dive into the water when some of the crates hadn't. Oh so sorry, awfully clumsy. They'd waited patiently for Gerald to drag them up from the bottom of murkiness while his fishy friends had taken a dive and run, Ianto and Owen hot on their heels, and got them into the relative dryness of one of the warehouses.
Gerald looked over his shoulder where Gwen was having a friendly chat with the harbour master in the lit part of the warehouse, discreetly keeping them all out of sight. "I can give you a cut, just between us."
"Not doing yourself any favours here, buddy." Jack thumped him with the gun. It squished along the forehead. Jack stared at the slime on the barrel, shook the gun. Slime dropped. "Ew," he added, under his breath.
"It's nothing." Gerald shifted from one foot to the other, little fishy eyes blinking and trying for deception high-style. Jack raised an eyebrow at Gerald. "Really." Gerald gulped. "Nothing."
"Oh yeah? Open the..." crates, Jack had had on his lips for a snazzy dazzling show of team competence but his team was busy. Gwen was shooing the harbour master back out into the cold and wet, Tosh was poking at the piece of tech she'd put together and Owen and Ianto were still out of sight, probably having a smoke around the corner. "Nevermind." Jack grabbed a crowbar and opened the first crate himself, keeping one eye on Gerald. Gerald was baring his gills and hissing water bubbles.
The crate popped open, and really, Jack had thought it'd be something more exciting than a crate-ful of vespas with Gerald's wiggling, but the net worth in money was high enough to justify a bit of worry. That didn't explain who brought heroin into Swansea, when Tosh had arrow highlighted all the reasons why it would be the blowfish in her weekly update on suspicious activity. He had arrow highlighted proof, and now a crate with vespas.
"Oh. They sparkle." Tosh poked at the lie detector cum everything blindly, eyes growing definitely interested as she stepped closer to the crates.
Gerald made a fair impression of a sharkteeth grin. "I'm sure I could ask to work something out. I leave you five, you-"
Jack swivelled back around, gun back to forehead and the blowfish snapped his jaws shut, flicker of fear in his eyes again. Jack's gun squished. Ew, again. "The same in the rest of them?"
Hesitant nod. Jack was dying for a hint of a lie, but the blowfish eyes were dull.
"Tosh, can you scan them? Something in the tanks or in the construction?"
"There's nothing--" The blowfish shut up at the look of Jack. Lackey blowfish, Jack hated them.
"Nothing, Jack." Tosh ran the scanner over the vespas, testing it all, he trusted, and came up with blinking green lights and no pink alerts.
"We're mates, yeah?" Jack tapped the blowfish on the forehead, then took down his gun to cheek level, so much better to glare over the fun then around it. "For the good of England," Gwen coughed meaninfully, "Wales," Jack corrected, "for the good of Wales, this wonderful place of sheep and grass and rain that you live in, et cetera, look, I don't fancy coming out here every few weeks to catch you or one of your buddies bringing stuff in from wherever."
"We just--"
"I'm talking, buddy." Jack poked the gun harder at the blowfish cheek. Truth is, he'd fancy one of the vespas, but Tosh was glaring at him and shoving pictures of the shot-up Swansea kids at him mentally, projecting them across the distance. Gwen was only glaring. "You pull something, you get sloppy, we waltz in and confiscate your merchandise and every single time you walk out again and I know you have other things going on."
The blowfish blinked dully back at him. "I know nothing. Just am told to be here and I'm here."
Jack hated playing police when the little buggers just went behind their backs the next time they weren't looking and didn't get a tip-off from someone in the harbour in time. It almost wasn't worth it to truck out here, but then again, dead Swansea kids and some seriously defective H moving through the council estates and it all came back to these guys with their fins and three piece suits and strange smell, a combination of tuna and Old Spice.
"Not anymore. I'm shutting you down."
The blowfish squeaked.
"Tosh! Catalogue the crates, check them for traces, anything. Ianto," Jack touched his earpiece and pulled a face when there was no reaction, "nevermind. Gwen, I want you on cataloguing what we know about the distribution of you-know-what other than you-know-where and you-know-how." He glanced meaningfully at the blowfish and made Shhhh-gesture with his finger to his lips. "Owen!" Jack threw up his hands when there was no reply over the comms and turned back to look at the blowfish. "And you, you will tell me exactly where this is coming from and, now, don't pull that face, and what I need to know to stop this. We're all friends here." Jack grinned broadly.
Green slime dripped from the blowfish gills. "I know nothing."
"Yeah, yeah, you get your info from space, I get it," Jack said dismissively. "Gwen?" Jack gestured thumb and fingers of one hand encircling the other.
Gwen looked at him with big eyes. "What?" she mouthed.
Jack repeated the gesture with more insistence, moved his gun in jerky 'well, get on with it' movement.
Tosh and Gwen exchanged a glance, shrugged at each other.
"The cuffs, Gwen. The cuffs!" Jack exploded out of his silent miming.
"Oh." Gwen shrugged. "They're- well, we don't have any for fins anymore. You lost the last pair in the channel when you were chatting with that dolphin and the dolphin said 'I like you' and you said 'I like you, too' and then it..."
Jack rolled his eyes, thrust his Webley into the holster. In the distance, the sound of zirring motors.
"You said we wouldn't need them again and not to bother to requisition " Tosh commented helpfully over Gwen's recounting.
Jack pulled a stun gun from the back of his belt and pushed it to the Gerald's chest. The blowfish jerked for a short moment, then crumbled in a fishy heap at Jack's feet.
"He's not dead," Tosh said.
Jack pulled a face. "I know. I can feel him breathing on me." Jack knelt down and searched the blowfish's pockets for weapons, inhaling deeply. "Mmm toasty fish. Please tell me we still have fish fingers in the freezer."
The motor sound got louder and the three of them watched Owen and Ianto burst out one of the rows of cargo boxes on two Vespas. Ianto curved his around and zoomed past them, Owen in hot pursuit and screaming, 'Oi!' and honking the little horn. Jack, Tosh and Gwen turned to watch the two scooters round the far corner and zoom back down another aisle.
"Oooh," mused Tosh, "I want one."
***
"Did you ever wonder if there was a Torchwood America?" Gwen asked around her teeth buried in a chicken wing, tearing at the white meat, fat dripping from the corner of her mouth
Jack leaned back against the counter in their Torchwood makeshift kitchen, looking out over the Hub, coffee cup dwarfed by his hands. Ianto took a yogurt from the fridge, strawberry, classic, and a spoon and took his spot next to Jack when Tosh pushed past him for the coffee, twix bar halfway in her mouth. Jack nodded a hello at Ianto and watched him open the yogurt, shove the spoon in and then bring the yogurt to his mouth. It took Jack to his happy place.
"What?" Owen slammed the fridge door shut, teeth buried in the crinkling plastic of a pre-packaged cheese cake slice.
"Torchwood America," Gwen repeated, then bit of more of her chicken. "In New York. Or LA."
"Mouth," Ianto muttered and licked at the spoon.
It was Jack's very happy place.
Owen snorted and tore at the plastic with his teeth, looked at the spit-coated and mangled plastic end after a few pulls and bites and set it on the counter. "Doubt the Queen has much say over there." Owen rummaged through the drawers, pulled them out and slammed them shut again until he came up with a fork that he stabbed into the cheese cake, grinning at the crack of breaking plastic. "But what do I know, eh?"
Jack really wanted a cheese cake slice too now.
"We would have heard of them though," Tosh said.
"Yeah, they'd have blown up Texas already." Owen cackled to himself. He ripped at the plastic along the holds he made with the fork and then ate the cheese cake straight from the packaging.
"There's no record of a base there." Ianto paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. "Of course that doesn't mean anything. They could just be very good at staying secret."
"Hey!" Jack said. "We're good at staying secret. No one notices a bit of bling in a blingy world."
Ianto snorted in amusement and shoved his spoon in his mouth.
"Would be useful now if there was one." Gwen jerked her head in the direction of the interrogation room. She licked her fingers clean of grease and Jack's happy place was getting bigger.
"They'd have the cool guns."
"Hey, we have cool guns!" Jack glared at Owen. "Not everything's better in the States."
All four of them stopped in mid-movement and looked at him.
"Cars, guns, birds," Owen said into the silence and licked at his crinkling plastic wrapping.
"Oi," Gwen and Tosh said in unison while Ianto gave a dreamy grunt of agreement.
Jack shrugged. "Well, if we can't do anything about this on the receiving end..."
"I want to stay in a motel like in Psycho, with doors on the outside!" Ianto said immediately.
"Wait, are we...?" Owen waved the spit-flecked plastic at Jack.
"Don't get all excited, it'll be dull. And work!"
"The Big Apple!" Gwen stuffed chips into her mouth, then threw her empty wrappers in the trash. "It'll be so good. I have to tell Rhys."
"I haven't said we're.." Jack held up his hands, but over Tosh's and Ianto's high five over motels and Owen's recounting of the latest Sex and the City, no one was listening. "He said New Jersey, that's not exactly glamorous."
"Good one," Owen said and walked out of the kitchen ahead, Gwen and Tosh who were swapping excited tales of fancy cars in movies.
Ianto dumped his yogurt cup in the sink - the spoon clanked - and followed them out. At the doorway he turned once more. "Really. Make it a motel. I love motels."
"You don't even know..." Jack started, but Ianto had already turned back around and left. Jack glance over the kitchen, between wrappers and plastic and abandoned cups and drank from his coffee. Surely even Jersey could be fun.
***
Tony rolled his eyes and bit harder on the cigar in between his teeth.
….and then we ran out of steam.
Sadface.
The. End.
Sadface